Manboobs
By Komail Aijazuddin
Penguin Books 
ISBN: 9781529929386
272pp.  

There’s a scene in Komail Aijazuddin’s memoir that made me laugh out loud, not the emoji type, but a real, hearty laugh.

You see, the writer sweats a lot. He’d tried everything to address his perspirant state, until a friend told him to try sanitary pads. He’s at an event, “wearing” his pads and there’s an accident right in the middle of his holding forth and well… you can guess what elicited my laughter. I promise, I’ve not spoiled it for you. 

Aijazuddin, an artist, tackles some significant topics in his memoir, from body image — he has enlarged male breasts which add to his isolation — belonging and acceptance to queerness, with raw honesty and thoughtful insight. Anyone who has felt like they don’t belong, be it in their body or in their classroom or in their family or country will resonate with this memoir.

It is our story, written for us. It is about belonging and also not belonging, both in Pakistan and in North America. It’s also about not feeling safe being yourself, which is a pretty common feeling, unless you’re in the most privileged cocoon in this country and can get away with anything, courtesy club memberships, elite schools and, of course, money. 

Aijazuddin writes his journey beautifully, from realising his same-sex feelings at a young age and his feelings of shame — about something inherently wrong that needs fixing — to recognising the fault lines in his relationships, as well as in the country he desperately wants to immigrate to, the United States. His is a moving story; you will feel empathy for the men who acquiesce so willingly to marriage in this society when they are clearly attracted to men. We all know such people.  

A witty memoir sheds light on growing up queer in Pakistan, moving to America and struggling to find a place between the two worlds 

Aijazuddin struggles with peers at the Academy, a nom de plume for Lahore’s prestigious all-boys college where he feels an outsider: not an athlete, not a popular kid, but a natural in the arts. He was effeminate, overweight and a Shia in a school (read country) where this did not win you any favours. He stuck out like a sore thumb, was a bit of a recluse, but found his sanctuary in American pop culture — their comic books, their musicals and in the fictional TV character Buffy, ie the “vampire slayer.” 

He makes astute observations of class and privilege, and also how that played out when it came to protecting boys’ sexuality. For example, writing about how he was the keeper of the Academy boys’ secrets, not “because I was some homing beacon of homosexuality, but it was really because they thought me so inconsequential in the pecking order that to tell me something was equivalent of telling no one.”

He knew he could out someone who was a bully, for example, but also recognised the consequences of such an act and “why the burden of someone else’s secret should have been mine to bear at all, particularly when my own weight gave me sciatica.” 

His observations on religion, both in his family and public life, are equally insightful. It’s refreshing to read something that is not just through the lens of terrorism or fanaticism; how his tarot card-reading mum existed alongside the solemnity of Muharram. This is the normal that you don’t see or read about Pakistan. These seemingly contradictory co-existences are not just issues for folks who live on islands of privilege. 

For example, he unpacks how magic exists in a highly religious society like ours. “It’s in the written incantations wise men cram into leather talismans to cure everything from impotence to broken phones. It’s in my grandfather’s turquoise ring that he wore to ward off the evil eye, and in my mother’s insistence to always give some money to charity every time she travels, as sadka. When I think of my faith (as European Americans so often demand Muslims living in America do), I think of these things, as much a part of the fabric of my soul as my first kiss.”

Aijazuddin especially packs a punch when he writes about the great American dream — “you have to be asleep to believe it.” America has been sold as a land that takes everyone in. That was Aijazuddin’s expectation, especially as he felt isolated in Pakistan but, in the US, he learned integration didn’t just happen upon arrival; he was “too Pakistani to be gay in America.” Plus, he arrived shortly after 9/11, a time when the welcome wagon had been pulled away. 

He’d always been seen as an outsider. “How can you find happiness despite years of humiliation, physical danger, and a legion of Brooklyn hipsters who know you only as a queer from Whereveristan? How do you summon the courage to be yourself no matter where you are?” 

Aijazuddin’s memoir offers some answers, and hope for anyone who feels like they don’t fit in their bodies, families, homes and country.

The reviewer is a journalism instructor.

X: @LedeingLady

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, November 24th, 2024